Flickr Photos

Bucaresti/2

A little drunk from eating alone in a busy restaurant, three bottles of passable local pinot noir drunk with two British representatives of the railways or something. A Scottish guy who could have been in the NUM circa 1982, and an English bloke who you could imagine shopping at Bluewater. These guys travel the world on conferences to discuss and implement new railway schemes, guage changeovers, selling new rolling stock to countries with world bank/EU/IMF funding. Like the railway equivelent of British aerospace I guess. Better than selling landmines or cluster bombs. They had just been taken in a closed carriage full of booze/food and hostesses for a jolly in the countryside which involved roast suckling pig and other local produce, plus some folk dancing and music, before or after attending a conference whose keynote speech from the Romanian head of railways lasted a good three hours. This was their world.

Mine was a little different. Leaving the restaurant a young prostitute grabbed my arm as I crossed the road and asked me if I wanted to fuck her. It was 20 euros for a blow job. I declined but she kept hold of my arm and appeared genuinely annoyed that I would turn her down. Not annoyed but dissapointed that I was obviosuly gay. I mentioned my wife, how lame that is, I think I actually told her that I liked to fuck my wife, so sorry. Where do you go with that? But she kept on, whats wrong with you, you don’t like to fuck me etc. So i finally told her I thought it was immoral to fuck prostitutes and walked off to her curses. She actually repeated what I had said. ‘Immoral, fuck you!’ and spat at the ground. Five minutes later on a main street I stopped in a doorway and took stock of what had happened. I felt terrible that I had said that to her. I don’t think prostitution is immoral, she can do what she likes with her body. I don’t feel like sitting in judgement on anyone, especially not a young romanian woman on teh verge of becomeing an EU citizen. What a terribly patronising thing to say. So, still slightly buzzed from the wine i went back, found her hanging about outside the same retaurant and apologised. She looked at me as if I was from planet zog. Perhaps I am. I was suffering some kind of cultural displacement. I found myself in stupid situations and said clumsy things. I was a thicker version of myself, like the guy who has always had long hair who decides to cut it all off, gets a number one and spends the next two weeks bumping his head on things.

Who else would I upset, who else would upset me in my two weeks in romania?